Six masked gunmen shot dead a policeman in the early hours of Saturday in his village of Bani Magdoul the Giza district of Kerdasa on the outskirts of Greater Cairo, an interior ministry statement read.

The assailants, riding three motorcycles, shot the lower-ranked police officer, who worked for the National Security Agency, as he left a youth centre.

Security forces are said to be intensifying their efforts to apprehend the assailants.

Hundreds of policemen have been injured or killed in similar drive-by shootings by Islamist militants since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Kerdasa, once a vibrant a base for the now-banned Muslim Broherhood, was the site of a number of deadly Islamist attacks on police stations and officers in the immediate aftermath of Morsi's ouster.